To counter the loneliness and uncertainty brought by the Virus, to resist its ruinous effects on one’s aptitude for clear thought, to cancel out the effect of its noxious mythologies, to defy the poison of the monsters it fosters, to offset our fears …. To offset our fears, perhaps we should give thanks.
I am not sick but closer to the end and a prime candidate for the Virus, and in what must be the case for millions, the Virus has provoked in me recalibrations of every sort and a desire to say what I want to say now. Very consciously, I’ve set about making amends, reaching out to help where I can, and saying thank you to those who have mattered to me.
Dawn Galambos* and Jean Shervais were the two best teachers with whom I ever worked, and that’s saying something, because I knew truly mighty men and women as teachers and coaches, individuals who could summon up vast pools of knowledge and kindness, but Jean and Dawn were the best.
Both taught English, both directed plays, both devoted themselves to making sure that their students were prepared for what came next — the next teacher and grade, freshman year of college, and challenges related to problem solving and clear communication in writing and speech.
Both worked harder than anyone else I knew, and while an unflagging work ethic can compensate for all kinds of flaws in expertise, if that work ethic and excellence in instruction are combined, then a teacher of matchless skill will appear. Dawn and Jean were such teachers.
Then, there is this: they were excellent in two demanding spheres, the classroom and the stage.
In the thick, impossibly busy middle of the year, they directed plays, and it is the complexity of that undertaking, while grading hundreds and hundreds of essays and teaching 5 classes superbly and juggling graduate work and serving on committees, that helps raise them, in my estimation, above the norm.
Think of a pyramid. The apex of that pyramid is opening night, an evening of nerves and channeled energy and split-second timing and the unrivaled joy of dozens of adolescents performing for an audience, their vulnerabilities kept in check by practice and the confidence instilled in them by their friends and parents and especially by the director, by Jean and Dawn.
To direct a play means to mesh into one enormous body, two or three dozen bodies in a synchronized motion of perfect pitch, tempo, lighting, blocking, sound, and costume changes. It means managing a budget, finding help to construct a set, searching for the right costumes, begging, calling in favors, promising favors, avoiding becoming sick, managing exhaustion. It means calling forth performances that avoid the overly dramatic, performances that are modulated, exact, that match the text of the script. It means tending to the tumultuous emotions and challenges adolescents face every day. It means building that pyramid hour by hour, quarrying the stone, hauling it, lifting it, fitting it together so precisely that one could not slip a scrap of paper between the joints, cloaking it in marble so that it gleams in the light. It means finding a way to do everything listed in this paragraph with a sense of joy added to the mix. Without the joy of the stage, everything else is drudgery.
I could no more direct a play than build a house. Between them, Dawn and Jean have directed 3 dozen or four dozen plays, maybe more. Think of all of those young men and women over decades who leave the high school carrying the stories of their time in such radiance.
It is the deceptive ease of their mastery of all the forms of teaching that I most admire — deceptive in that there is no ease but that made by hard, daily, exhausting work that only those who know them best ever see.
Jean and Dawn are my friends. I am thankful that I worked with them and for many years was a witness to their intelligence and talent.
*Dawn is still teaching, still directing plays, still a vital part of the High School’s daily Life. The choice of past tense here was merely a stylistic choice. All of us taught together at Owen J. Roberts High School.
